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Man and the Volcano

"after all, we do not need to worry about global warming. the dust will put us back into ice-age", a guy comments an article at Economist.

The president of Iceland yesterday warned that a second "much bigger" volcano is set to erupt and could spark further chaos. President Olafur Grimsson fears if the second volcano, Katla, blows, it could have devastating consequences worldwide. Mr Grimsson added: "We have emergency plans in our own country, so I think that it’s high time for European governments and airline authorities to start planning." Katla is much bigger and usually erupts once a century. The last one was in 1918 so we have been waiting for some years. There is some evidence that the longer Katla waits before relieving itself, the more spectacular the results are. When it comes to lava output, its eruptions can be 100 times larger than what is going on at Eyjafjallajokull.

For the second time in three years, Iceland has been the source of economic meyham in Europe. This time it wasn’t Iceland’s banks that caused the trouble, but volcano, with the strangest and toughest possible name on earth: Eyjafjallajokull! Here is the funny video concerning the name of the volcano. watch and enjoy till the ashes hasn’t reached u 😉 (btw, Volcanic ash isn’t really ash; it is composed of tiny bits of jagged rock and glass. It is hard and abrasive; it doesn’t dissolve in water, and can be spread by the wind.)

and another song dedicated to Iceland volcano 🙂

ahh, btw, talking about the nature disasters, global warming came to my mind. Did Global Warming Cause Iceland Volcano to Erupt by any chance? As it appears, the answer is no. As experts say, you can blame climate change for a lot, but not for spoiling your European vacation. Size also matters in the question of whether ash from the volcano in Iceland will be enough to slow global warming by creating a kind of reflector shield in the stratosphere to block some of the sun’s rays and prevent them from reaching the Earth’s surface. The relatively small size of the volcano and the eruption leads scientists to believe that the world will go on warming with no cooling effect from Iceland’s geology.

The World Health Organisation said the ash clouds do not yet pose a significant health risk because they are being wafted away from European population centres and dispersed.

ahh, also, sorry I have to say it: If the volcano continues to erupt, and if its ash has a high proportion of sulfur, it can mix with the water vapor in the air and form a weak broth of sulfuric acid, coming down as acid rain.

and the good news (sorry for irony :))): Not all the effects of volcanoes are bad. After Mt. Pinatubo erupted in 1991, huge amounts of ash circulated around the globe for months. Says Dr. Robert Trombley, a former Air Force pilot and now director and of the International Volcano Research Centre, a private organization in Apache Junction, Ariz.,: "We had fantastic sunsets for a year." not bad hah?